bomregions {DAAG}R Documentation

Australian and Related Historical Annual Climate Data, by region

Description

Australian regional temperature data, Australian regional rainfall data, and Annual SOI, are given for the years 1900-2008. The regional rainfall and temperature data are area-weighted averages for the respective regions. The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is the difference in barometric pressure at sea level between Tahiti and Darwin.

Usage

bomregions

Format

This data frame contains the following columns:

Year
Year
eastAVt
Eastern temperature
seAVt
Southeastern region average temperature (degrees C)
southAVt
Southern temperature
swAVt
Southwestern temperature
westAVt
Western temperature
northAVt
Northern temperature
mdbAVt
Murray-Darling basin temperature
auAVt
Australian average temperature, area-weighted mean
eastRain
Eastern rainfall
seRain
Southeast Australian annual rainfall (mm)
southRain
Southern rainfall
swRain
Southwest rainfall
westRain
Western rainfall
northRain
Northern rainfall
mdbRain
Murray-Darling basin rainfall
auRain
Australian average rainfall, area weighted
SOI
Annual average Southern Oscillation Index
co2mlo
Moana Loa CO2 concentrations, from 1959
co2law
Moana Loa CO2 concentrations, 1900 to 1978
CO2
CO2 concentrations, composite series
sunspot
Annual average sunspot counts

Source

Australian Bureau of Meteorology web pages:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/ http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml

Regions are identified on a map that can be found at: http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/rain_timeseries.shtml

The CO2 series co2law, from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html, is from Law Dome ice core data.

The CO2 series co2mlo is from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL (www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/)

The series CO2 is a composite series, obtained by adding 0.46 to he Law data for 1900 to 1958, then following this with the Moana Loa data that is avaiable from 1959. The addition of 0.46 is designed so that the averages from the two series agree for the period 1959 to 1968

Sunspot data is from http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/

References

D.M. Etheridge, L.P. Steele, R.L. Langenfelds, R.J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola and V.I. Morgan, 1998, Historical CO2 records from the Law Dome DE08, DE08-2, and DSS ice cores, in Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change, on line at Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html

Lavery, B., Joung, G. and Nicholls, N. 1997. An extended high-quality historical rainfall dataset for Australia. Australian Meteorological Magazine, 46, 27-38.

Nicholls, N., Lavery, B., Frederiksen, C. and Drosdowsky, W. 1996. Recent apparent changes in relationships between the El Nino – southern oscillation and Australian rainfall and temperature. Geophysical Research Letters 23: 3357-3360.

Examples

 
plot(ts(bomregions[, c("mdbRain","SOI")], start=1900), 
     panel=function(y,...)panel.smooth(bomregions$Year, y,...))
avrain <- bomregions[,"mdbRain"]
xbomsoi <- with(bomregions, data.frame(Year=Year, SOI=SOI,
                cuberootRain=avrain^0.33))
xbomsoi$trendSOI <- lowess(xbomsoi$SOI, f=0.1)$y
xbomsoi$trendRain <- lowess(xbomsoi$cuberootRain, f=0.1)$y
xbomsoi$detrendRain <-
  with(xbomsoi, cuberootRain - trendRain + mean(trendRain))    
xbomsoi$detrendSOI <-
  with(xbomsoi, SOI - trendSOI + mean(trendSOI))
## Plot time series avrain and SOI: ts object xbomsoi
plot(ts(xbomsoi[, c("cuberootRain","SOI")], start=1900), 
     panel=function(y,...)panel.smooth(xbomsoi$Year, y,...),
     xlab = "Year", main="", ylim=list(c(250, 800),c(-20,25)))
par(mfrow=c(1,2))
rainpos <- pretty(xbomsoi$cuberootRain^3, 6)
plot(cuberootRain ~ SOI, data = xbomsoi, 
     ylab = "Rainfall (cube root scale)", yaxt="n")
axis(2, at = rainpos^0.33, labels=paste(rainpos))
mtext(side = 3, line = 0.8, "A", adj = -0.025)
with(xbomsoi, lines(lowess(cuberootRain ~ SOI, f=0.75)))
plot(detrendRain ~ detrendSOI, data = xbomsoi,
     xlab="Detrended SOI", ylab = "Detrended rainfall", yaxt="n")
axis(2, at = rainpos^0.33, labels=paste(rainpos)) 
with(xbomsoi, lines(lowess(detrendRain ~ detrendSOI, f=0.75)))
mtext(side = 3, line = 0.8, "B", adj = -0.025)
par(mfrow=c(1,1))

[Package DAAG version 0.99-3 Index]